Maurice Fairfield page 1.

A man who puts life into words. A true inspiration to all the undiscovered talent from in and around Hull and a gift to thisisUll.com and all of its readers. Born and bred on Holderness Road in ‘Ull in the 1920’s, Maurice found the site from his home on the other side of the world in Melbourne, Australia. Since then, he’s contributed nothing but real treasure: his life in words. Brilliant. Maurice's contributions are listed below..

Poetry - Is Anybody There? By Maurice Fairfield
	What's to come is still unsure Only one thing's really certain One day (some day fairly soon) I'll check out that final curtain * Will I play it centre-stage? Will I pass out in the wings? Will I rant in noble rage Read more...

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Poetry - Mummy Dearest By Maurice Fairfield
	The pretty little butterflies Are dancing o'er the waterfall The little birds are tweeting And the baby lambs are bleating And from a little way away I hear the sound of kids at play Oh what a lovely lovely day Read more...

Poetry - My Girlfriend Can't Erase Her Past By Maurice Fairfield
	My girlfriend can't erase her past It's giving me the blues The signs of other lovers last She's covered in tattoos She'd been around the block a bit I knew that from the start Read more...

Articles - Made In Hull - Part Six - The War Part 2 By Maurice Fairfield

	Meanwhile, back in Hull to which we returned the schools stayed closed for about a year and we envisaged our summer holidays stretching ahead into a hazy future untroubled by thoughts of the cane (still applied with enthusiasm by male teachers) and struggles with the seemingly irrelevant academic basics which they threatened and coaxed into us. Read more...

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Poetry - Hide and Seek By Maurice Fairfield
	So catch me if you can My good old playmate Death Let's play our game of hide and seek Till I run out of breath You counted ten some time ago Ready or not, you said Read more...

Poetry - The Spoon Player By Maurice Fairfield
	The name on the skin of the bass drum Was Blackshaw's Storyville Five And the board leaning up at the door of the pub Was promising jazz that was live A slight exaggeration for the Storyville Five were not In the class of the bands they copied Read more...

Poetry - Faith, Hope And Charity By Maurice Fairfield
	I loved a girl named Hope and she was pretty faithless I met another called Faith and she was pretty hopeless I got involved with Charity (she wasn't very kind) And what with all the three of them it really blew my mind Maintaining my tenacity but feeling broken hearted I met a bird named Chastity Read more...

Articles - Made In Hull - Part Five - The War 1 By Maurice Fairfield

	We approached the end of a one off summer unusually sun-tanned, playing in the dusty street or at East Park and (most of us) wondering what was going on. Many of our parents looked worried. We had seen newsreels of Italian bombs and machine guns pacifying the luckless Abyssinians because Mussolini wanted an empire like everyone else. We had seen Read more...

Poetry - Geriatric Blues By Maurice Fairfield
	Now all my fellow oldies I hope you're feeling well Listen what I'm sayin' cause I got a tale to tell I got the blues, I got the blues. I got the geriatric blues Joints are creakin' bladder's leakin' teeth are missin' Havin' trouble pissin,' got the blues, the geriatric blues. Go spread the news about the blues, Read more...

Poetry - Song of Hopeless Love By Maurice Fairfield
	I've got a girl who's mighty sweet Fellows fall down at her feet Still she treats me like a skunk She only loves me when she's drunk. When I call her on the phone (This girl I'd love to call my own) April August June October Read more...

Poetry - Across The Sea By Maurice Fairfield
	If you ever go across the sea to Cuba If only at the closing of your days You can sit and watch the moon rise on Havana The sun go down on Guantanamo Bay To see the guards, the guns, the razor wire The prisoners in their cages turning grey Read more...

Poetry - The Short Goodbye (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bum) By Maurice Fairfield
	The door she left through when she left Was firmly closed but not quite slammed Her steady step upon the stair Suggested that his hopes were damned He glanced around the dingy flat The faded curtains, threadbare rug Read more...

Poetry - Love Among The Ruins by Maurice Fairfield
	When first you swam into my life I knew that I was hooked I knew that I was caught at last My goose was really cooked I thought that I'd thrown in my hand My playing days were over Read more...

Articles - I'm Dreaming Of A Weird Christmas By Maurice Fairfield

I spent roughly half my life in Hull and the North of England and I could count the number of White Christmases on one hand. Cold, yes. Wet, yes. Bitterly cold, yes, but rarely white. Yet most of the cards featured gabled houses with icicles dangling from the eaves. Horses pulling sleighs, and always masses of that frigid white stuff. Most of the yuletide snow I have seen is artificial Read more...

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Poetry - Memories of the Royal and Ancient City of Hull By Maurice Fairfield
	Now if you are an Ull Kid Or if you used to be one No matter where you wander Or how long you're gone Then from your deepest psyche Memories you'll cull Read more...

Poetry - A Valentine By Maurice Fairfield
	The Germans say Ich lieber dich the French say Je t'adore the Spanish say, Ti amor The Greeks si Agapo In all the tongues of all the World Read more...

Articles - Made In Hull - Part Four - Schooldays By Maurice Fairfield

	My first day at school is still vivid in a misty sort of way. We were all given a little child-sized blackboard, with a tiny blackboard eraser and some chalk. So far so good. Unfortunately I thought it was mine and when they wanted it back they had to take it by brute force. The blackboard was Read more...

Articles - Made In Hull - Part 3 The Calm before, (The Storm) By Maurice Fairfield

	Things which happened in the thirties flutter by me like calendar leaves in an old movie and I try to catch some of them as they fly. There was the Graf Zeppelin which flew over Hull in 1932 as part of a goodwill tour. Many people believed that its crew were photographing the docks and industries Read more...

Articles - Made In Hull - Part Two - Our Terrace By Maurice Fairfield

	Ours was the typical terrace. Some had houses with small front gardens and a path down the middle to each front door. Not so Alex Avenue; a short dead-end courtyard with seven houses on each side. Foot traffic only, in fact the head of the terrace was enclosed by a hoop topped iron fence with a gate Read more...

Articles - Made In Hull - Part One - Arundel Street Days By Maurice Fairfield

	My story begins in Arundel Street and wanders away to the shallow end of Holderness Road next door to the tram sheds and opposite the old Astoria Cinema, which was at that time the New Astoria Cinema. Then to Hedon for a time, then back to Arundel a couple of years before the outbreak of the war. Read more...

Fiction - Feller's in Cut By Maurice Fairfield
	Well that's her gone. You don't remember me do you? I'll have a pint while you're thinking about it. It's me Jack, Harry Fergus's son. Here for the funeral. Thought I'd see her get put under. Not sure why. It's always a laugh though, watching a parson doing a Read more...

Opinions - Hull - A Letter to Jon Snow Channel 4 By Maurice Fairfield - Another program knocking Hull?

	I have lived in Australia for twenty years but I was born in Hull in 1928 and have lived with patronising contempt for the place ringing in my ears all my life. Perhaps less the town and its people in general but the working-class people who have lived with the contempt of the middle-class who lived off them and who I remember as themselves contemptible. Read more...

Poetry - An Old Man's Afternoon By Maurice Fairfield
	In a would be poets' pub Smoke stained Dusty, (that's the pub not me) And some of the would be poets too If truth were told, as truth must be Read more...

Poetry - Schoolboy Ethics By Maurice Fairfield
	We're not going to cut and run We'll stay till the job is done We're hard men here in Australia We'll hang tough and never fail ya Socialists and Greenies may Live to fight another day. Read more...

Poetry - The Plumber By Maurice Fairfield
	Behold the plumber where he stands His wrenches gleaming in his hands His jaw is square, his eye is keen His belly flat his body lean. No common man, his hire comes high His hourly rate is in the sky Read more...

Poetry - Men weep more as they grow old, and women less - newspaper headline. By Maurice Fairfield
	Skimming through the daily press Tales of spite and greed oppress Evils great and evils small, A headline caught my idle eye A statement by some talking head Researched and tested, and he said Read more...

Poetry - Do Not Depend on the Wind By Maurice Fairfield
	Do not depend on the wind, many a sailor and miller has found A grave in the wave a grave in the ground In waiting for wind. Do not depend on the rain, Pleasure and pain, Harrowing loss, empty gain Read more...

Poetry - Rosedale Chimney Hill By Maurice Fairfield.

	Long ago in a different time The World seemed bright and shiny new. My chin still wore downy fuzz, My eyes saw clearly, straight and true. Though money was scarce I had my share Of strengths and skills, and loads to bear Could never crush inside my heart, The love of life abiding there. Read more...

Poetry - Somebody and Pictures at an Auction By Maurice Fairfield.

	Somebody sentenced me to life some time ago. For something I can't remember doing. Now as my sentence dwindles to its close, Freedom no longer pulls me as it did. My cell though cramped, is cosy, And the meals arrive on time. Also, I have grown used to them. I have some cell-mates. Read more...